


we've been fighting this fight (never taking the time to let things grow)

by iamyouropus (adieu_sweetamaryllis)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 14:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3533381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adieu_sweetamaryllis/pseuds/iamyouropus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Clarke is safe,” Indra says, loud enough for only Lexa to hear. She hates the hope that fills her, knowing that she does not deserve it. </p><p>It is not until everyone has left that she begins to break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I sincerely apologize for how bad my guestimations of Trigedasleng are. If anyone has any suggestions for how to actually say the things in italics, let me know. :) 
> 
> Also, I apologize if some details are a little off. I have to admit I haven't watched the whole first season yet and just picked up from season two a week ago.

“Skaikru flosh Maunon klin.” 

The words are muted in the canvas tent, but everyone hears Indra as she rushes into the commander’s quarters. 

_The sky people massacred the Mountain Men._

“Em ste odon,” Indra says, and she looks directly to Lexa this time. _It is over._ Her face is hardened, bloody, and Lexa has to force herself to hold her gaze. “Wor ste odon.” _Our war is over._

She allows herself to revel in it for a second, to feel the swell of joy that should go along with a victory. But this victory is not theirs. The Sky People are no longer their allies.  

“Disha wor ste odon,” she corrects her. 

_This war is over._

As much as she would like to deny it, she must accept the possibility that Clarke might harbor ill feelings towards the Trigedakru commander and their abandoned alliance. Yes, this war is over, but a new one might be brewing. Their army had left the Sky People when they needed them most. If Lexa were in Clarke’s shoes, forgiveness would not come easily, if at all. 

If Clarke had even survived the battle, that is. In their last moments together, Lexa had seen in Clarke’s eyes what she feared most from the girl: weakness. Tears. Love. 

It had broken Lexa’s heart, but she steeled her own expression as she explained herself to the leader of the Sky People. Her people must come first. She could not allow hundreds of her own to die just for the sake of loyalty to the girl who had stolen their commander’s heart. 

But she could not allow herself to think about these things when there were more important duties at hand. 

If the Sky People did attack, it would be what was left of the one hundred against her army, a thousand strong. The odds would be in their favor. But Clarke and her people are not to be underestimated, and Lexa knows that.

Her eyes wander, looking at the men and women in her tent, taking note of which of her trusted advisories had returned from the battle. Her warriors were strong and fought well, but the mountain men were stronger than she had anticipated. 

_No,_ she thinks, _that’s not entirely true._ She knew what she was getting into when she declared war against Mount Weather. But she’d had no other choice, and with Clarke by her side and her friend on the inside, she thought maybe, just maybe, they stood a chance. 

_“Please, don’t do this,”_ Clarke’s voice echoes in her mind. She wishes so badly that there had been just a moment where she could’ve spoken to Clarke privately, could’ve explained herself. But there was no time, and the commander was certain there never would be. Their story was already set in stone. 

“Teik baga au,” she says, addressing her council. _Our enemy is eliminated._

“En Skaikru?” she asks Indra. She knows she can’t ask about Clarke, as much as she might want to. Her concern for their abandoned ally would be seen as weakness. Many were already doubting her leadership after she had insisted on forming the alliance with the Sky People. She did not give them reason to doubt her in battle, and she would not give them reason to doubt her now. 

“Emo ste kilr, heda,” Indra confirms from her post next to Lexa’s throne. “Klark ste kilr,” she says, loud enough for only Lexa to hear. 

_Clarke is safe._ She hates the hope that fills her, knowing that she does not deserve it. 

It is not until everyone has left that she begins to break. All at once her cape is too heavy, her armor too tight. She claws at them as she disrobes, her fingers slipping against the clasp at her chest until at last the heavy cloak falls from her shoulders. She is small underneath it, smaller than she likes, and she becomes smaller still as she sinks to the ground, fists clenched at her sides.

 _Clarke is safe,_ she reminds herself, trying to calm the ache in her chest that has persisted for hours on end. _Clarke is alive,_ she thinks, _yes,_ but not as the same girl she began to love just days ago. That girl was gone, along with the three hundred other souls taken from Mount Weather. 

Lexa’s sides twinge, a reminder of the burns branded into her side after the war. Fresh marks, each one representing a life taken during battle. 

She imagines the iron burning into Clarke’s skin in remembrance of the lives she had ended. Three hundred and eighty men, women and children died in that mountain — she knows that Clarke will carry their scars deeper than any burn could reach. 

You could have stopped it, she reminds herself. The war could’ve ended without the blood on Clarke’s hands. But then the blood of her own men would be on her hands, and she could not let her people die. Her spirit would not allow it. 

_Love is weakness,_ she chides herself. A weakness she could not permit herself to have, as she was reminded so harshly earlier that night. Her punishment was swift, the pain of betraying her newfound love overwhelming and consuming. 

She can’t remember the last time she cried, but now the tears will not stop flowing. She buries her head in her hands, silent, as she crumbles against her throne. 

_“May we meet again,”_ she said as she bid her farewell. 

Now it sounds more like a prayer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before leaving for Polis, Lexa sends scouts to check on Clarke. The news she gets two days later is not what she was expecting: Clarke is nowhere to be found in the Sky People’s camp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Accidentally wrote another chapter of this. Whoops.

Before leaving for Polis, Lexa sends two of her best trackers to find Clarke. 

Their task was not to deliver a message; she would not force the girl to communicate her, and she was very certain that Clarke would not be in the mood for a conversation. No, she just wanted some affirmation of the girl’s safety before they began their trek to the capital.

The news she gets two days later is not what she was expecting: Clarke is nowhere to be found in the Sky People’s camp. Her men had watched day and night, and there was not a single sighting. 

She does not cry this time — she had exhausted herself of tears in the days prior.

They return to her with the news late into the night, and she instead spends a few minutes entertaining the idea of returning to Mount Weather by herself in the cloak of darkness. She might be able to find some clue of what had become of the girl there. 

No, that wouldn’t work. It was a massacre — how was she to tell Clarke’s blood from any other? And had she died there, the Sky People’s custom would not be to leave the body behind.

Could she travel to Camp Jaha to investigate? Lexa, Heda kom Trigedakru, returning to the allies she betrayed days before with her head bowed? Impossible. No contact could be made with the Sky People without risking her people’s pride.

Her only option was to command her scouts to return to the camp and to report back with any sign of the Skaikru’s leader. It did not leave her with much hope. 

// 

Three weeks pass before Clarke finally arrives in Polis. 

She had left Camp Jaha unable to face her people, knowing each face represented multiple lives she had ended so that they could survive. It had not been easy to say goodbye, but she didn’t allow herself more than a glance back. She knew lingering would only make the pain worse.

Clarke traveled first to Lincoln’s village, where he remained with Octavia after the battle. Indra was unwilling to reinstate Octavia as her second, but she allowed her to remain in her village. Clarke was grateful. She didn’t want Bellamy to be alone, and without his sister nearby he would be all but abandoned. 

Lincoln insisted on coming with her, at first. 

“The roads are dangerous, Clarke,” he said. “You know Heda will take my head if anything should happen to you.” 

She laughed it off, but she later wondered if there was any truth to it. 

She finds that Lexa occupies her thoughts often as she walks. It’s not that she’s surprised — her feelings had grown very strong for the young commander over the few weeks they spent together. But still, after her betrayal, she would be lying if she said she hadn’t felt some hatred towards the girl. 

On some level, she had understood what she did. Her people came first. But Clarke had just started to allow herself to believe that she was the one thing that the commander cared about, that she could be the one person the commander might need. That Lexa would leave her, unprotected, on Mount Weather against an impossible enemy… that had cut deeper that Clarke thought possible. 

But she soon understood a pain much worse, and knew there was no punishment she could inflict on Lexa that could compare. 

// 

She hears the man address the commander, hears her own name in the thick foreign tongue that sounded so dangerous falling from Lexa’s mouth. She had arrived in Polis not minutes before. As soon as she approached, the guards recognized her and escorted her directly to the commander. She did her best to understand as they talked in hushed tones while they lead her to the commander’s quarters, but it was no use. They reached a large, dark tent, the guard held his hand up, indicating that Clarke was to wait outside, and disappeared between the flaps. 

Just a few seconds later, he steps back out of the tent. 

“She requests your presence, alone,” he states, not looking at her as he resumes his position outside the entrance. 

She’s sitting on the throne when Clarke enters, her legs crossed, almost posed. Her face is hard, no hint of emotion, and Clarke recognizes the walls she’s been working to destroy since their first days together. 

“Clarke,” she says simply, her face nearly stoic. Her eyes betray her and take Clarke in greedily, scanning her up and down several times before returning to her face. “You are unharmed?”

Her voice is lighter, softer than Clarke has ever heard it. 

Lexa’s cheeks appear sunken in, her eyes set grimly as she looks at her former ally. Clarke hopes it is leftover war paint and not exhaustion shadowing the girl’s face, but she knows it is unlikely. The rest of her is clean, a stark contrast to the blood-soaked skin Clarke had last seen. Her skin looks pale and almost delicate, and Clarke wishes she were closer so she could see how green her eyes would look in contrast. 

Clarke nods in response, not trusting herself to speak quite yet. She had debated the whole way what would be her first words upon meeting the commander again. Now that she’s in right in front of her, she’s not sure if she could even greet the girl.

“It is good to know you are safe,” she admits, and it isn’t hard for Clarke to hear the truth in her words. Lexa visibly relaxed the second Clarke entered the tent in one piece. 

“Where have you been?” she asks after a beat. “You left camp weeks ago. It could not have taken you this long to get here.”

“I stopped to see Lincoln,” are the first words she says to the commander, and they feel wrong. She had planned so many things to say — she did not expect Lexa to be the one initiating a conversation and acting as if everything were normal. “Wait, how did you know when I —“ 

Lexa’s gaze drops quickly from her face, her lips tucked neatly into her mouth. Clarke’s mouth falls open as realization dawns on her. 

“You sent spies to check on me?” she asks, eyebrows quirked, and Lexa nearly blushes at the scrutiny. She wasn’t sure why Clarke was looking at her that way; she had taken similar action in the past, and Clarke knew it. Now that she was sure the girl was safe it did seem a little over the top, yes, but to her Clarke was so much more than an ally or a leader. She needed to know for certain. 

“I wanted to be sure you were safe,” she responds cooly, regaining composure. 

Clarke’s eyes track to the side, her mouth twitching down around the corners. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have left me on that mountain.” 

_“Please don’t do this…”_ Lexa hears again, and she tries to ignore the familiar ache hidden in Clarke’s eyes, a scar left by the tears that filled them at the foot of the mountain.

“I had no choice,” Lexa is quick to defend herself. She had been hopeful that Clarke would understand her decision, now that she knew of the hard choices that came along with being a leader. She disgusts herself, feeling hope from something which had surely tormented the girl, but still it rises in her chest. 

“I know,” Clarke agrees softly. 

“You do?” 

Her voice is filled with childish hope and she regrets her words immediately. Then Clarke’s eyes are back on her, and she’s moving forward. 

“You fought for your people,” she affirms. She doesn’t stop walking until she’s standing in front of her. Lexa resists the urge to stand too, but resigns herself to the safety of her throne. 

This conversation with Clarke was not going at all how she expected, and she knew the girl had a tight enough hold on her heart to rip it out at any time. And she knew she deserved it. 

She could not ask for forgiveness. 

“I fought for my people,” she repeats. “As you fought for yours.”

Clarke shrinks at the mention of the massacre, and Lexa regrets bringing it up so brazenly. She still does not know what happened on that mountain — her men had all retreated long before the battle ended, the Sky People returned to their camp and no one in the mountain had lived to tell the tale. 

“I did what I had to do,” Clarke says, her voice low. The pain in her eyes is one Lexa has endured her whole life, from her first execution at just fifteen through the defeat of whole villages during her fight for peace in the amongst her clans. It was a task that was too big for her young age, but she took it on anyway. 

“And because of that, your people survived,” she tries her best to look assuring for her friend, but it’s not something she’s accustomed to. Clarke nods, her eyes troubled. Lexa waits a moment before adding: “as did mine.” 

Clarke hesitates. “I can’t say I forgive you… but I understand.” 

Her statement is simple, but Lexa still finds it discomforting. She stands, and in two quicks steps comes face-to-face with Clarke. “The things we must do for our people, Clarke,” she says, her voice soft. “They cannot be forgiven.” 

Her cryptic words offer comfort in a way only Lexa could manage. Clarke had been struggling to forgive herself from the moment she pulled that lever, sacrificing innocent lives for the sake of her own people. It was a need that had overwhelmed her the past few days, and she racked her mind in attempts to fulfill it; hearing that it could not be met was almost a relief, in a way. 

“I suppose you’re right,” Clarke concedes, a tight smile across her lips. 

“But still,” she says, her eyes rising to meet the commander’s. “I’d like to move past them.” 

Lexa offers a small smile at this — not the first Clarke has seen, but certainly the sincerest. “I’d like that as well.” 

There’s a moment where she thinks Lexa might reach forward and embrace her. 

Instead, she says: “My people will always come first, Clarke.”

Clarke nods solemnly. 

_Yes,_ she thinks, _I learned that lesson the hard way._ It is not something she will soon forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you follow me on [ Tumblr,](http://ai-ge-smak-daun.tumblr.com/) I will most likely follow you back because I am looking for Clexa blogs! :)


End file.
